End of the Year Info

Data collection and course backups

Instructors, please remember that as soon as students have graduated, their information (including gradebook entries and quiz/survey responses) will be unavailable to you. You will need to download the results of surveys or quiz results that you are using for research before the 27th of December to make sure that you have all of the data for all of your students this semester. It is also a good idea to make a backup of your course for your records before graduated students drop out.

BLACKBOARD DOWNTIME

Your My.UNL team will be upgrading the Blackboard software to version 8 over the Holiday Closedown in December. My.UNL.EDU will be offline from December 27, 2008 through January 3, 2009.

The latest Blackboard release builds on the student engagement tools in earlier releases, and improves the performance of the software. Most noticeably, the Gradebook has been transformed into the Grade Center. Instructors will be able to enter scores more efficiently, select specific display types, freeze names for easier scrolling, and drop lowest/highest scores. The new Grade Center will also allow faculty to print progress reports and access powerful analysis tools. Please go to http://training.unl.edu and look in the What's New area for more information and training opportunities.

Another change in version 8, is the absence of the Digital Drop Box. The Blackboard Assignment Manager tool is an improvement on the Drop Box. Faculty post student assignments, and students upload their completed assignment directly back into Blackboard. There you can download their work, provide feedback, grade the assignment, and post grades to the Grade Center with a few mouse clicks. To learn more about the Assignment Manager, go to http://itg.unl.edu/myunl/index.shtml, click on the Faculty/TA tab, and look for the Using Assignments tutorial under Blackboard Assessments.

If you have any questions,please contact the Help Desk at 472-3970 (outside of Lincoln, toll free at 866-472-3970), or via email at helpdesk@unl.edu